News Highlights:
- Hamas official calls Ariel Sharon’s efforts to force Hamas out of the Palestinian legislative elections “intervention in Palestinian affairs”; Sharon also threatens to disrupt the voting in the West Bank if Hamas runs.
- Sept. 20th – George Bush is reportedly pushing for the Palestinians to declare a temporary state in Gaza.
- The Rafah border crossing will be opened for a few days to allow some Palestinians to leave Gaza, but permanent opening of Rafah still not resolved.
- Palestinian PM Ahmed Qorei says Palestinians will fight Israeli moves to link the largest West Bank settlement to occupied Jerusalem.
- Israeli state to allocate $1 million to defend senior army officers charged abroad with war crimes; the move follows the recent near-arrest of Doron Almog in Britain.
- Hunger striker Mohammad Mahjoub finally hospitalized after pressure on Canadian government authorities, who had been refusing to move him; Mohammad is jailed in Ontario under secret evidence on a “security certificate” and has been on hunger strike for 76 days.
- News Special: Last section of the news was a report by Derrick O’Keefe from Stopwar.ca about the activities being planned Sept. 23-26 in Vancouver as part of the global day of anti-war action on Sept. 24th.
Feature:
A live interview with Jeff Halper in Jerusalem, who is from the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. Jeff spoke about the charges for war crimes being brought against Israeli army officers and government officials in Britain, as ICAHD is involved in filing some of the complaints. He also talked about the ongoing home demolitions and settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank and what consequences these will have for any future prospects of peace.
Focus on Zionism:
Highlights of a September 19th, 2005 press release by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza about the new actions by Israel in building a buffer zone inside northern Gaza, on Palestinian territory.
Here is an audio file of this show: